Finding People on the Internet

Finger

Finger is a command which provides information on a user on another system. The information may be provided by the user’s employer (in the case of an institutional database such as  at Stanford University) or it may be provided by the user, via editing the .plan file in the home directory. There is currently no “finger server” operating over email, so that you cannot execute finger from a store and forward network. One form of finger tells you basic information about an individual, assuming you know the machine to query. The command is of the form:

finger <search string>@host.domain

The <search string> can be a fragment of a name, but should not contain spaces. Since many UNIX sites limit user-ids to 8 characters, your search string should probably correspond to this limit. 

Example

In this example I search for a user whose name or user-id includes the string “bernard” on the system world.std.com. This might be useful if the person’s first name is fairly unique, and I know their system name, but not their user id.  

% finger bernard@world.std.com
[world.std.com]
world -- The World -- Public Access UNIX -- SUN 4/280 SUNOS 4.0.3
  2:22am  up 22:09,  14 users,  load average: 2.04, 2.22, 2.05

-User-     --Full name--           -What- Idle TTY -Console Location-
aboba    . Bernard D Aboba         Login Fri 27-Mar-92 11:18PM from netcom.com
ley.
  [1290,1290]  </users/aboba>;  Group: aboba
  Groups: aboba

  aboba has new mail as of Sat 28-Mar-92 12:58AM

  Plan: (last modified Mon 9-Mar-92 12:10AM)
        Plan:  A course of action, measurement, and correction.
        Currently, I’m recuperating from the first edition of 
        Bulletin Boards and Beyond.

dirsolns . Bernard Platoniz         Login Mon 23-Mar-92 7:15PM from dialup 739-WR
LDtty00
  [1046,1046]  </users/Platoniz >;  Group: Platoniz 
  Groups: Platoniz 

  Platoniz  has new mail as of Tue 24-Mar-92 8:35AM
  last read Tue 24-Mar-92 8:35AM

Institutional finger

The problem with standard finger is that you need to know on which machine the person has an account. In order to make searching easier, certain universities support an “institutional finger” command of the form:

finger <search string>@<institution>.edu

When this command is executed, the institutional database is queried, returning the matching machine and user-ids. 

Example

% finger akbar@mit.edu
[mit.edu]
Student data loaded as of Mar 4, Staff data loaded as of Mar 3.

Notify the Registrar or Personnel as appropriate to change your information.

This service is maintained by Distributed Computing and Network Services.
Send Comments regarding this service to mitdir@mit.edu.

      Use finger help@mit.edu for some instructions.

There was 1 match to your request.

Complete information will be shown only when one individual matches
your query.  Resubmit your query with more information.
For example, use both firstname and lastname or use the alias field.

       name: Bmug, Akbar
 department: Nuclear Physics, Mascot
       year: G
      alias: A-Bmug

Schools implementing institutional finger

Schools implementing institutional finger include:

Domain name
                                                    Institution

csus.edu                                                                 California State University at Sacramento
colorado.edu
                                                     University of Colorado
csus.edu
                                                                 California State University at Sacramento
dartmouth.edu
                                                 Dartmouth University
iastate.edu
                                                         Iowa State University
mit.edu
                                                                 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
princeton.edu
                                                    Princeton University
sonoma.edu
                                                         Sonoma State University
sunysb.edu
State                                              University of New York at Stonybrook
ucsd.edu
                                                                University of California at San Diego
uiuc.edu
                                                                University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
umich.edu
                                                           University of Michigan
utdallas.edu
                                                      University of Texas at Dallas

Whois

The Internet version of whois looks up users in a database maintained at nic.ddn.mil. Information on how to get your email address included in the database is included in Chapter 18 – Knowbot. 

The simplest form of the command is:

whois <search string>

Example

A straightforward use of whois is when you have someone with a unique last name, such as mine:

% whois aboba
Aboba, Bernard (BA8)            aboba@WORLD.STD.COM
   1442A Walnut St. #62
   Berkeley, CA 94709
   (510) 549-2684

   Record last updated on 07-Jan-92.

However, if you are searching for a common name, life can become more complicated:

% whois bmug

BMUG, ALBERT (AB20)                                 510-849-2684
BMUG, BERNARD N., JR. (BBS1)                        510-849-2684
BMUG, KEVIN (KB20)             AKBAR@GANDWANA.ORG   510-849-2684
BMUG, MICHAEL (MB17)           JEFF@MOOSEHAIR.ORG   510-849-2684

In this case, you need to execute another whois command using the symbol in parenthesis to get the information:  

% whois AB20

BMUG, ALBERT (AB20)            [No mailbox]
   BMUG, Inc.
   1442A Walnut St. #62
   Berkeley, CA 94709
   510-549-2684
Record last updated on 18-Dec-91.

Institutional searching via whois

Several educational institutions such as Stanford University now maintain an extensive whois database. If you know that the person you are looking for is at a given institution, you can query the institutional database via the command:

whois -h <institution>.edu <search string>

Example

% whois -h stanford.edu Gorbachev

                       Stanford University Whois Service
 "whois help" for general info        | Problems to "whois-problem@networking"
 "whois update" for entry update info | Comments to "help@networking"

Gorbachev, Michael (gorby)    (510) 849-2684
    Hoover Institution, Fellow

(returned 1 entry)

Institutions implementing global whois

Some of the institutions implementing global whois are:

Domain name
                                                   Institution

csus.edu                                                                 California State University at Sacramento
mit.edu
                                                                Massachusetts Institute of Technology
ohio-state.edu
                                                Ohio State University
sonoma.edu                                                        
Sonoma State University
sunysb.edu
                                                          State University of New York at Stonybrook
ucsd.edu
                                                               University of California at San Diego
virginia.edu
                                                      University of Virginia  

(use whois.virginia.edu)

ListServ whois

While the Internet whois is only useful to those with Internet accounts, there is also a ListServ version which can be accessed via email. However this command is somewhat different. The ListServ version of whois can only be used to find someone whom you know is subscribing to a particular ListServ. 

USENET address database

The machine pit-manager.mit.edu maintains a database of addresses of USENET posters. This database contains the names and addresses of thousands of people, many of whom are not listed in other directories. If you think that your intended recipient has been active on USENET, then you might wish to query this database.

To use this database, send mail to 

mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu, with a subject or text of the message being:

send usenet-addresses/<name>

Example

% mail mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu
Subject: send usenet-addresses/aboba
EOT
Null message body; hope that's ok

The response to the request looked like this: 

From daemon@pit-manager.MIT.EDU Sat Mar 28 01:05:30 1992
Received: by world.std.com (5.57/1.33.2)
        id AA03598; Sat, 28 Mar 92 01:05:28 -0800
Received:  by pit-manager.MIT.EDU (5.61/2.1JIK)
        id <AA22838@pit-manager.MIT.EDU>; Sat, 28 Mar 92 04:05:23 -0500
Date: Sat, 28 Mar 92 04:05:23 -0500
From: Mr Background <daemon@pit-manager.MIT.EDU>
Message-Id: <9203280905.AA22838@pit-manager.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Reply from mserv re: send usenet-addresses/aboba
Reply-To: mail-server@pit-manager.mit.edu
X-Problems-To: postmaster@pit-manager.mit.edu
Precedence: bulk
To: aboba@world.std.com
Status: R

aboba@world.std.com (Bernard D Aboba)   (Mar 22 92)  

For more information

An updated information file on finding email addresses is maintained by Mark Kantrowitz, mkant@GLINDA.OZ.CS.CMU.EDU, and is posted periodically to the USENET groups soc.college and soc.net-people. It is also available via anonymous ftp from a.gp.cs.cmu.edu in directory /afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/mkant/Public/college-email.txt. You will need to cd to this directory directly to get it though, since intermediate directories are protected.